Current Affairs Science Projects And Inventions

"I... have [decided to call my invention] the Improved Endless-Wire-Rope Way." Andrew S. Hallidie The first cable-operated railway was the London and Blackwall Railway, which opened in 1840. It consisted of a line 3.5 miles (5.6 km) long with hemp rope hauling the cars, but because the ropes wore out too quickly, it switched to steam locomotives in 1848. In 1870 San Francisco attorney Benjamin Brooks proposed using cable cars to provide fast, inexpensive, and convenient access to the desirable heights of that hilly city. Horsedrawn cars worked well on level ground but had great difficulty with San Francisco's steep gradients. Brooks obtained a cable-line franchise from the city but was unable to obtain financing and sold it to Andrew Smith Hallidie (1836-1900). Hallidie had been the first person in California to manufacture wire rope, and by 1871 he had two cable- car patents to his name. He hired engineer William Eppelsheimer, and the two designed the world's first practical cable car system. Their key innovation was a grip that allowed the car to stop by releasing the continuously moving wire cable and to start moving again by grabbing onto the cable. The San Francisco cable-car system began operating in 1873, proving both mechanically sound and financially successful. For the next two decades, many cities around the world replaced their horse-driven cars with Hallidie cable-car systems. However the electric-powered trolleys available by the end of the nineteenth century proved to be less expensive to build and operate, and by 1957 only San Francisco retained an operating Hallidie system. It is still working today, but these days the tourists greatly outnumber the commuters.   

"Why have I stopped writing? I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph..." Ken Kesey, writer During an earthquake the ground moves up and down and from side to side as a result of a release of energy from the Earth's crust. The seismograph is an instrument that continuously records this movement (seismic waves) as a function of time. Crude seismoscopes were invented by the Chinese around 132 C.E. but these merely indicated the direction of the earthquake's epicenter. Later Iranian and Italian instruments containing mercury baths that spilled in measured ways when the earthquake occurred indicated both direction of source and magnitude of movement, but not time of occurrence. British scientists Sir James Alfred Ewing, Thomas Gray, and John Milne (1850-1913) studied earthquakes and devices to record them whilst working in Japan. This resulted in the invention of Milne's horizontal pendulum seismograph in 1880. The idea of having networks of standard seismographs all over the world was promoted by Milne in the late 1800s. Seismographs are designed to measure the movement of the Earth's crust during a quake. The main component is a large inertial mass suspended by a spring in a frame attached to the bedrock. When the ground shakes, the frame moves and the inertial mass does not. The varying distance between the mass and the frame is recorded, and this provides details of the quake. Initially the recording was done by pen on a moving paper chart, but today digital records are produced. Seismograph networks led to the discovery of the Earth's liquid core in 1905, the discontinuity between the crust and mantle in 1909, and the small solid inner core in 1936.   

Paddle steamboats had been around for a century and propellers for half a century before the first proper motorboat took to the River Neckar near Stuttgart, Germany, in 1887. It had a petrol-driven internal combustion engine and was built by Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Wilhelm Maybach (1846-1929). Rumor had it that the two inventors were looking for a less risky vehicle for their new engine than the old stagecoach they had recently motorized. The 14.7 foot (4.5 m) long boat traveled at a maximum speed of 6 knots. Daimler practiced a mild deceit on his nervous first customers, by concealing the engine with a ceramic cover and informing them that it was "oil-electrical," which sounded a great deal safer than the potentially explosive petrol. The deceit clearly worked because the Neckar, as it was called, sold well. It was produced by the recently formed Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft (DMG), and sales were undoubtedly helped by the poor state of German roads at the time. Yet another German inventor, Rudolph Diesel, followed close behind Daimler and Maybach, introducing a diesel engine into boats in 1903 with instant commercial success. Indeed, for marine use diesel engines were to have a greater long-term future than petrol, proving to be more reliable and safer as they used a less flammable fuel. The inventor of the first British motorboat was Frederick W. Lanchester, who had built the first gasoline-driven car in England in 1896. His design— launched in Oxford in 1904 and built in his back garden—had a stern paddle wheel and was powered by an engine with a wick-based carburetor that, despite being described as looking like a bed of celery when opened up, worked very efficiently. 

A television system, by definition, transmits and receives live, moving half-tone images. Early versions, such as those invented by John Logie Baird in the 1920s, used crude, electromechanical, spinning, perforated, scanning discs to record and subsequently produce the images. The first transatlantic images were transmitted with this system in 1928. Television relies on the fact that the human brain can convert a sequence of slightly different still images into a moving picture if more than fifteen frames are received every second. As soon as the number drops below fifteen, the motion looks jerky. Today's televisions are a product of the invention of the cathode ray tube. This is coated with a phosphor that glows when an electron beam hits it. Behind the phosphor is a shadow mask that divides the image into picture elements (pixels). Television sets typically have 525 lines down the screen and these are raster scanned every sixtieth of a second. The scanning is interlaced so that odd-numbered lines are "painted" on one scan and even-numbered lines on the next. In 1926 Philo Farnsworth (1906-1971) developed the world's first all-electronic system, where, like today, the cameras scan electronically and the television receiver is scanned electronically, too. By 1936 the BBC was producing 405-line, high-resolution images using this system. By 1949, ten million monochrome televisions had been sold in the United States, and now the average American spends between two and five hours per day "glued to the tube."The breakthrough in U.K. television watching was the broadcast of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953. 

Thanks to some unknown inventor, self-heating cans first appeared around 1900 for use by mountaineers and explorers. The most common versions involve a can with two chambers—one for the food and one for the heating unit. The heat is generated by an exothermic (heat-producing) chemical reaction between calcium oxide (quicklime) and water. The heating unit is contained in either an outer chamber surrounding the food, or an inner compartment immersed in the food or drink. It is activated by pressing a button or poking holes to break the seal between the water and quicklime. The reaction heats up within a few seconds, and heats the food inside the can in minutes. During World War II, Heinz manufactured self- heating beverages with a cordite stick down the center that heated the contents when lit, but they were not always reliable. Legend has it that the first recorded casualty of the D-day invasion of Normandy was a British soldier whose self-heating meal exploded, covering him in tomato soup when he tried to light the cordite stick. More recently, some companies have revived the concept. In 2002, Nescafe tested a self-heating coffee can in the United Kingdom, but found that the can did not heat the liquid to a consistent temperature. In the United States, celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck began selling self-heating coffees and lattes in 2005, but had to recall them the next year after they failed to heat evenly, or in some disturbing cases, exploded or melted. It seems that the world may have to wait a few more years for this food of the future. 

"Spring hasn't really arrived until you are awakened by the first lawn mower." Source unknown To some it is the one of the most annoying sounds made by machines, while to others it has an almost musical quality. We are talking, of course, about the buzzing noise of the two-stroke engine. From motorbikes to lawn mowers this invention has been the model of simplicity in the world of internal combustion, and its modern design originated with British engineer Joseph Day (1855-1946). An earlier two-stroke engine had been devised by Dugald Clark in 1880, but it lacked the simplicity of Day's version. Using just three moving parts, Day's engine used the pressure below the piston to force the fuel and air into the combustion chamber while simultaneously pushing the exhaust gases out. This meant that a pulse of power could be sent along the drive shaft with every revolution—an efficiency improvement over the four-stroke, which sends a pulse of power every two revolutions. The simple design of the two-stroke has led to its wide popularity. Most high-performance motorbikes use them, as do outboard motors for boats. But despite the advantages of its high power-to-weight ratio, the two-stroke is actually more polluting than the four-stroke. Each time a fresh charge of fuel, air enters the combustion chamber, a small amount leaks out with the exhaust, which can be seen as the oily sheen on the water around an outboard motor and smelled as a distinctly oily aroma at go-kart tracks. Current environmental concerns mean that, unless significant improvements are made to two- stroke technology, we may not see them around for much longer. 

“I put some tempera water-based paint in a bottle and took my watercolor brush to the office..." Bette Graham The correction fluid used worldwide to cover mistakes on paper began life in the United States in a single mother's North Dallas kitchen. In 1951, Bette Graham (1924-1980) was a young divorcee bringing up a small son, Michael (later Mike Nesmith of the Monkees pop group) and working as a secretary at Texas Bank & Trust. Bette and her colleagues appreciated the new speedy electric typewriters, but their carbon-film ribbons made fixing mistakes messy. The only answer was to type the whole sheet again. Bette harbored artistic ambitions that had been thwarted by an early marriage. The story goes that her artist's eye spotted workers who were decorating the bank's windows and covering mistakes with an extra paint layer. Soon Bette was doing the same with a pale water-based tempera paint. Her boss never noticed and she began giving out bottles of her miracle "Mistake Out" fluid to colleagues. Bette enlisted help, including a school chemistry teacher, to improve her formula. When, in 1958, she was fired for using her company headed paper for a bank letter, she was able to focus on promoting her product—now called Liguid Paper. She transferred operations to a factory in 1968, and by the 1970s was running a Dallas headquarters producing 25 million bottles a year. Bette sold out to Gillette in 1979 for $47.5 million, but was to die shortly afterward. 

"Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius." An Wang Nowadays we trust computers to store more and more of our important records and information. However, before the 1950s no one would have even considered trusting a computer to store data—there simply was not the technology for long-term storage. The first computers were not reliable because they stored data using such means as acoustic waves in mercury-filled tubes or complicated circuits of vacuum tubes. Then, in 1949, a new way of storing binary data was invented: "magnetic core memory." Computers store data as binary information, where each bit of data is stored as a zero or a one (off or on). With core memory, metal cores are magnetized in one of two directions, and this determines whether they store a zero or a one. These cores are threaded together by wire in a flat lattice formation and data is recorded, or read, by sending pulses of current through the wires to the cores. The technology behind this core memory was created by the Shanghai-born U.S. physicists An Wang (1920-1990) and Way-Dong Woo. Its nature explains why computer memory is called "memory," as magnetic cores, like magnetic disks, keep a record of their content even after the power supply is cut off. For this reason it is still sometimes used in specialized applications in military and space vehicles. 

It is estimated that over 100,000 patents went into the creation of the first practical automobile. At the end of the nineteenth century, the steam car had evolved considerably and was being sold commercially in the United States and the United Kingdom. But manufacturers were still using a lever device, called the steering tiller, to direct the vehicle, which made steering motor cars difficult and strenuous. Alexander Winton (1860-1932), a keen cyclist and owner of Winton Automobiles, had been trying to replace the tiller on his car with a system modeled on a bicycle's steering. He came up with a circular wheel with a tube running down to a steering box linked to all four wheels. The mechanism in the steering box translated rotation of the wheel into linear action, and gave drivers increased control of their vehicles. Even Henry Ford, inventor and founder of the Ford Motor Company, was converted to the new steering system. Prior to the Grosse Pointe Race in 1901, he had been given one of Winton's steering mechanisms, complete with steering wheel assembly, because Winton believed that Ford's device was dangerous. Ford went on to beat Winton, who had been tipped to win the race, but using Winton's steering system. Unfortunately, Winton's local competitors were simultaneously working on a very similar system and beat him to the patent. The Ohio Automobile Company, later renamed the Packard Motor Car Company, added their version of the steering wheel, based on Winton's early developments, to the second car they launched in 1899. It was immediately successful, and Winton, whose company custom- made every vehicle, found the competition difficult and was forced to stop production in 1924.

Steam engines have been around since the mid- seventeenth century. Noisy monsters, they used steam pressure to push pistons and turn engines, but they were massively inefficient and expensive to run. Engineers and inventors were aware that their machines made inefficient use of steam, and were looking for a better system to harness all that energy. In 1884 British engineer Charles Parsons (1854-1931), head of the electrical section of a ship manufacturer, patented the first steam turbine, which he used as the power source for an electrical generator that he had also built. Using incredibly fast jets of steam had been causing inventors problems because they were just too rapid to use. At low pressure, steam jets were still reaching speeds of more than 1,000 miles per hour (1,610 kph), and at high pressure as much as twice that. Spinning a turbine blade at such a speed would rip it apart. However, Parsons managed to slow down slightly the movement of steam from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. By setting up the turbine in a series of stages, he made the differences in pressure small enough to move the steam fast, but not too fast. The resulting engine turned over fifty times as quickly as the best of the old designs, which marked an enormous leap forward. Parsons's steam turbine was fitted for use in electrical generating stations in 1891. Its application to marine propulsion meant that steamers and warships could travel much faster than before—in 1897 the ship Turbinia achieved the speed of 34.5 knots, making it the fastest ship in the world at that time. Steam turbines are still used in power stations today.